The security and remote monitoring industry is well established and provides many products for remote monitoring and intrusion detection. Existing remote monitoring products provide transducers that detect intrusion and notify owners in case of an emergency using one of several methods, including cellular phone call, land line phone call, Voice over IP (VoIP) phone call, instant messages and Short Message Service (SMS).
All such known prior art products focus on generic connectivity methods and data formats that are needed for communication between a remote resource and its owner in case of an emergency. But no known prior art product addresses specific cellular connectivity issues that arise when cellular wireless networks are used as communication channels in case of an emergency.
Cellular networks have been designed for basic voice communication between users. Emergency situations bring up several connectivity issues that are not addressed in existing cellular networks. Existing cellular networks suffer from connectivity issues such as long call establishment times, lack of prioritization between emergency call and a regular call, lack of methods to instantly connect to a group of helpers without occupying a full duplex channel for each helper, lack of methods to exchange any other data except voice, lack of methods to provide grades of service connectivity, lack of methods to expand a group of helpers with new group of helpers and lack of methods to charge a owner for all cellular charges that might be incurred due to an emergency call.
Such cellular connectivity issues significantly affect levels of service that a security system provides. Due to increased number of cellular users, most cellular networks experience congestion, and if an alarm event occurs during this period, a regular cellular full duplex phone call may not connect, thereby contributing to delays in responding to an emergency call. Owners may not be contactable due to dead zones and hence more than one owner or a set of helpers must be reached at the time of emergency using full duplex cellular call, thereby contributing to system overload and further congestion. If a set of helpers that are initially contacted are not in a position to offer immediate help, and a new set of helpers cannot be quickly added to communication channel, valuable time will be lost in case of an emergency. If calls are dropped and a new full duplex call cannot be established then valuable information from remote site may be lost. If emergency cellular usage charges are not billed to the owner and are billed to helpers, then many helpers would refuse help if such calls become frequent.
It can be seen that without resolving said cellular connectivity issues, any security system implemented using regular cellular full duplex cellular calls will not scale to millions of users and provide acceptable levels of service due to limited, un-guaranteed bandwidth availability. Hence there is a need for a new security system that provides methods specifically designed to resolve said cellular connectivity issues.
There are many prior art systems that offer security solutions for intrusion detection and remote monitoring and are broadly categorized as video surveillance, real-time services, multiple monitor systems, cellular phone notification systems, internet based security systems etc. But no known prior art specifically addresses said cellular connectivity issues for implementing a scalable and commercially viable security system in bandwidth constrained cellular wireless networks.
The following paragraphs in current section include relevant prior art in this field.
There are security systems that establish calls using regular cellular wireless full duplex call between a resource in emergency and a helper or owner. Refer to claims section to get further details on meaning of resource. Due to the number of signaling messages to establish a full duplex call, it can take several seconds to establish a single call. This could be between five and sixty seconds. This latency in call establishment is compounded if there are many helpers to be dialed, as there are no methods provided to simultaneously dial several phone numbers and hence each number has to be dialed sequentially. Latency becomes compounded especially when first set of owners and helpers are not available and next set of owners and helpers can be attempted only after waiting for several rings from the first set of owners and helpers.
In addition, no methods are provided to prioritize an emergency call from regular calls while experiencing congestion. There are no methods provided to override user preferences that are setup to disable rings. There are no methods provided to automatically connect a call and turn on speaker so an emergency request can be heard at helpers end without user intervention. Hence such systems cannot offer a scalable security system using existing cellular wireless full duplex calls.
Some prior art systems use voice over internet protocol (VoIP) to setup a communication channel, but VoIP is a full duplex protocol meant for networks that have high bandwidth, low latency and predictable delays. Current cellular data networks such as second generation (2G), two point five generation (2.5G) and third generation (3G) suffer from high latency, low bandwidth and variable delays. Hence such networks are unsuitable for full duplex VoIP based communication.
The U.S. Doc. No. 20040086093 describes a system of using VoIP to setup a communication channel in an emergency situation. This document primarily addresses issues regarding proprietary implementation of security systems and multiple device connectivity issues and provides VoIP based security system as a solution to provide standards based solution. But this does not address any of the above said cellular connectivity issues. Cellular connection is mentioned here as one of several end-points using VoIP server and Common Channel Signaling System number 7 (SS7) gateway. Hence this system will suffer from all of the said cellular connectivity issues.
Some prior art systems use instant messages to notify owners about an emergency. Instant messaging in cellular networks use short message service (SMS) that is a store and forward technology and hence there are no time limits as to when a SMS will be delivered. Hence such systems are unreliable to be used in case of an emergency.
There are several remote monitoring systems that enable viewing of remote locations using video cameras and internet. Such systems do not address said cellular connectivity issues.
There are systems that use availability metrics of users before establishing a connection. Cellular networks do not provide such availability information to external applications. Cellular networks internally can track a user moving between cell sites but information regarding a user entering a dead zone or turning off ringer or entering a crowded cell site is not available and impractical to gather due to the immense amount of availability data that will be generated to be effectively managed for millions of users.
The U.S. Doc. No. 20030062997 describes a system to notify users based on rules of availability and network efficiency in general. But this does not specifically address any said cellular connectivity issues.
There are systems that use proprietary wireless technology to notify neighborhood in case of an emergency. Such systems are impractical due to proprietary nature of the technology as an entire network including access points, devices and switches needs to be custom manufactured.
The U.S. Doc. No. 20030184436 describes such a system. But this does not address any said cellular connectivity issues.
There are systems that enable connectivity between monitored resource and a security monitoring service using public switch telephone network (PSTN) call. In such systems a monitoring agent makes calls to cellular phone numbers of owners using regular POTS network. This procedure can take several minutes and suffers from the same set of connectivity issues as mentioned above.
There are systems that enable multiple watch points to monitor a remote resource but such systems do not offer methods to specifically address said cellular connectivity issues.
The U.S. Doc. No. 20030214401 describes such a system.
There are also several alarm monitoring systems to detect intrusion in a premises, but most such systems deal with issues of reliably detecting intrusion and communicating this information to a controller in fault tolerant manner.
The U.S. Doc. No. 20030193393 describes one such system to provide fault tolerant communication between transducers and controller. But this does not address any said cellular connectivity issues.
There are systems that enable transfer of audio, video and data on a real time basis but all of such systems address a different issue of verifying whether there has been an intrusion. Such systems do not address said cellular connectivity issues.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,778,085 describes a real time video and/or image monitoring system wherein emergency response agencies are connected to a remote location. But this does not address said cellular connectivity issues.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,778,085 describes a system wherein a wireless command unit interacts with an operator who has access to the monitored resource. This does not use cellular wireless technology and hence does not address said cellular connectivity issues.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,433,683 describes devices capable of using cellular RF transceivers to transmit and receive audio/video signals. This does not address said cellular connectivity issues.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,772 describes a security system in which an alarm is notified using a regular cellular phone call and information is retrieved using a browser. This does not address said cellular connectivity issues.
As can be seen from above no known prior arts address said cellular connectivity issues that arise while using a regular cellular wireless full duplex call in a security system.